The climate of ‘austerity’ poses fundamental challenges for police forces who need to respond to the management of crowd events in ways that reduce costs without compromising police capability, public safety or police legitimacy. It is increasingly recognised that to achieve this a more nuanced and evidence based policing approach is needed.

 

This professional development course is designed to assist police forces to increase their understanding and awareness of the latest leading edge knowledge, evidence and practice as this relates to Public Order and Public Safety Policing (POPS). It brings together world leading social scientists and highly experienced police practitioners to discuss, critically evaluate and understand the latest knowledge and evidence. The course is primarily aimed at POPS strategic and operational leads across the UK, but will also be relevant to others such as POPS training and PLT leads as well as those in private industry. The course will focus on the scientific theory and research on crowd psychology currently underpinning POPS APP as well as providing an overview of the latest innovations in POPS operational practices. There will be a strong emphasis on the policing of football. Attendance will enable participants to deepen and broaden their knowledge of good practice and strengthen capacity to understand how to utilise research and theory to develop efficiencies and effectiveness in their own policing operations.

 

The course has been developed by Professor Clifford Stott and there will also be contributions from Dr Ian Whitfield (Liverpool John Moores University), Dr James Hoggett (University of the West of England) as well as keynotes from Professor Peter ‘Tank’ Waddington and Professor Ed Maguire (Arizona State University). There will be a range of inputs from highly experienced operational commanders and practitioners including Chief Superintendents Owen West (West Yorkshire Police) and Steve Neill (Northumbria Police, England Silver Euro2016), Superintendents Steve Furnham (South Wales Police, Wales Silver Euro2016), Nigel Goddard (PSNI Head of POPS, NI Silver Euro2016) and Dave Charnock (Merseyside POPS lead).

 

The event is being enabled through one of the UK’s newest inter-disciplinary police research centres, the Keele Academic Policing Research Collaboration (KPAC), is being conducted in partnership with the N8 Policing Research Partnership, is supported by the College of Policing and linked directly to a special issue of the leading international journal ‘Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice’. To cover the costs of the event participation will be £200 per person which includes registration, lunches, evening dinner and refreshments. Limited availability on campus B&B accommodation is available on a first come first served basis and this will incur an additional £50 charge for one night. To register or for further enquiries please contact Andrea Boardman a.boardman@keele.ac.uk  or on  01782 733363.